Chrome
by drufan
Summary: AU for the not human challenge, yeah didn't make it. John received his first augmentation when he blew out a knee playing, of all things, lacrosse.


_A/N: Okay, I did this for the not human challenge on flashfic. But seeing as I've never done one of those before and not very disciplined with time restraints…I didn't make it. Oh well. This is definitely an AU and not related to any of my other stories. This only makes mention of Rising and The Siege Part 2. I did take a little license with Sheppard's family from spoilers from the upcoming Outcast. But it shouldn't spoil too much. Enjoy._

_Disclaimer: Tain't mine. I'll try and remember to put them back how I found them. _

**Chrome**

John received his first augmentation when he blew out a knee playing, of all things, lacrosse. It was at his elite prep school, and his knee cap was facing one way with the rest of his leg the other. The doctors at John Hopkins' Hospital gave him a totally new knee thanks, in part, to a newly developed replacement joint and a generous grant from the Sheppard Foundation, a silent partner of a few software and robotics companies. No one was the wiser.

While recuperating, his father saw this as an opportunity to try and turn him from his first and true love. "Sheppards don't fight in wars, John. They supply them."

The dinner table was always a place for debate. A debate on whether John was going to embarrass the family yet again by showing his sympathetic plebian roots or if he would follow in the more accepted forms of employment. "Really, if you want to work for the government, you should try starting as an assemblyman or other local politics…like the young man next door."

The young man next door was related to the Kennedys by marriage or infidelity. John didn't really care enough to know. All John needed to know was that kid was a creep and gas bag. "Yeah, I'll go hide behind the family name when I get a DUI like the paragon of virtue residing next door."

His mother studied the candied carrots on her gilded bone china, hiding her smirk behind a delicate hand. His brother sat opposite of him at the formal dining room table and rolled his eyes, stuffing another potato in his mouth. His father brooded, chewing his meal as though it were cud. "All I'm saying is--" Each word measured and carefully crafted by his father's mouth passed his lips by way of his teeth. "--that the military is not necessarily a good fit for you."

A wry, calculating grin etched into seventeen year old John's face. "But you and Granddad were both in the Navy, like the paragon's fourth cousin, eight times removed."

The elder Sheppard's eyes narrowed dangerously and his face flushed red. "Yes, but we had to do our duty under law. Today's military is voluntary. Besides, so many colleges are courting you…What about engineering?" He leaned towards the table and looked the teenager in the eye. "John…son…"

John returned the stare and calmly retorted, "As I recall, Granddad and you were pencil pushers…" He just had to twist the blade a little more. Sheppards did not get dirt under their fingernails. At least the last three generations didn't. The one before that had been sharecroppers from somewhere in Virginia.

His father snorted like a bull complete with flames coming out of its nose and made all sorts of garbled, nonsense words trying to refute. John's brother shrunk down in his chair even further, hiding his snickers. John's mother simply held up the rolls and asked, "Anyone want more?" However, she seemed to add as an almost afterthought, a shrewd, spur of the moment afterthought, "And as I remember, a certain son married a plain, uncultured girl from the Bronx, on scholarship at City College, against his father's wishes." After everyone declined the offered food, she concluded her say with, "I believe she was a Hippie as well," and smiled sweetly at her husband.

This, as John understood it, was a major bone of contention between his father and Granddad. Not enough to write the younger Sheppard male out of the family fortune, but enough not to get asked to the family compound in West Palm during the Season.

_Way to go Mom, _John thought with glee.

Realizing he was outvoted and outmatched, the elder Sheppard begrudgingly relented. "_**Fine**_, I'll talk to Bill about a recommendation for the Air Force Academy tomorrow." With the concession, his father stabbed a potato on his plate with enough force to crack it. "Happy?"

The sweet smile grew wider on his mother's face and she gave a single nod in her husband's direction.

"Thanks Dad, that's all I was asking for." John smiled beatifically at those seated at the table and then took another bite of salad.

-----------------

John's crash in the Afghan desert lead to his second and most extensive augmentation. He never gave permission. He never asked for it. His father decided on his behalf. John woke up States' side in a hospital room, looking at his mother's puffy, red eyes, and never feeling her hand in his because he was completely numb.

Once he found out what they had done, "Gentleman, we can rebuild him….better, stronger, faster," ran sickeningly through his brain. At first he was incensed. He felt used and abused. He was angry at his government, father, mother, brother, uncles, aunts, cousins and the population of the world as a whole.

He wished his rescuers had left him to die with the rest of his crew on that lonely hillside. The only survivor of a Pave Hawk crash, villagers had carried him through rough terrain and hostile held territory to get him help. He remembered very little of it. He should have felt more grateful for their heroic journey to carry him home, but now he was a thing, not a person. Even if this was the wave of the future, he hated it, pure and simple.

People were Auging, as it was known now, to increase endurance, productivity, brain power and any other way they could think to use it. But this was a complete augmentation. His body was mainly servos and silicon. Intricate metal pins and hydraulics replaced muscle and bone. As far as he knew, he was the only one of his kind. He wanted to die, terminate, cease functioning…

"Your skull is now a titanium alloy protecting your very organic brain. Only minor additions were placed there to help your brain interact with all of the software. All other body functions are now completely automated and regulated by a CPU in your chest. However, and this is very exciting, we have cloned your skin and blood cells and added a silicon composite for your outer casing to make it more pliable and durable. If you are pricked, you will bleed. We are very proud of that." After finishing her spiel, the bouncy, little, black-haired, biomechanical engineer beamed her gleaming white teeth at him.

John dully kept eye contact with the enthusiastic Dr. Frankenstein. She babbled on and on about all the upgrades they had made and the new technology that they finally had an opportunity to use. She expounded on how they had been waiting for someone like him to come along; how he was the first, in hopefully, a long line of new soldiers for this man's army.

He was Metallo, the Terminator, Darth Vader, and a bastardization of Data rolled into one.

On the upside, the bouncing ball of energy was kind of cute.

So they were married three months later when he could finally walk in a straight line and not crash into the church's pews. They divorced one year later, when he realized all she really liked about him was his chrome substructure. She nicknamed him Robocop. It was not that endearing.

His new job didn't help with their marital bliss either. He was a covert ops kind of guy. Once he learned how to use his new body, he accepted his new body. Then Uncle Sam wanted a return on the investment. He found himself all over the world and in some very interesting places. He was the go to guy for very delicate situations.

Unfortunately, McMurdo wasn't that sort of job, until he had to make evasive maneuvers. He was playing escort for some muckity-muck general to a secret hole in the frozen ground. This guy must have been someone special to garner Major John Sheppard, secret agent man, as an escort.

After dodging what had to be the strangest UFO imaginable, he took the elevator down into the icy hole in the ground. Walking around the frigid interior of the strange alien place, he came across a chair and the fool who had fired the explosive squid at him. While chastising and talking with the nervous little man, he sat down, because that's what chairs are for. What was left of his organic DNA interacted with the alien furniture-- much to everyone's surprise-- including himself.

"I told you not to touch anything," the muckity-muck general complained.

"I didn't, I just sat down."

It was also the day he found out his cybernetics could interact with the alien furniture, because Dear Ol' Dad's company had been the recipient of advances linked directly from the makers of the alien furniture. Who knew? Tiny crystals throughout his inorganic innards were getting jiggy wid it. They practically ran home to Mama and he became one with the entire complex just because he wanted to sit in the fancy chair.

Or so said the loud, egocentric scientist across from him. Dr. McKay was very interested and excited at the interfacing, if not a little puzzled at first at how this rotor jock received such expensive implants.

"Of which I do not have any because there is no need," he smugly asserted. "I can keep up with the best of them without any additions of the robotic or mind-enhancing kind."

John listened without comment.

"But where on earth did you get the hardware? Plus, how much of your body is Augged? And where have you been hiding if the government didn't send you to us six months ago?"

"All really good questions, Dr. McKay." John took another bite of his lunch, never losing eye contact with the scientist.

Rodney studied John, waiting, biting his lip, and doing a little more waiting.

John took a last bite of his lunch, stood up, and walked away without further comment. John didn't like to share. Anyway, it seemed like a lot of fun to annoy the crap out of this guy, and John was sure Dr. McKay could find out everything he wanted to know without his help.

Next thing he knew he was standing in an alien city, in a different galaxy, and trying to calm down a huge awakening computer that thought he was the second coming. It also informed him of how it could not sustain all the new bodies, and was making certain concessions, like withdrawing the force field holding back an entire ocean, because their presence was depleting its power source.

While he tried to calm it down and discover what their options were, a team left for the first address in the computer, just in case. John ended up going on a rescue mission once the city had risen to the surface. The little flying spacecraft reacted like a puppy wanting to play. It was a pure delight to fly, even if it didn't come with an in flight meal.

This incident was where he met his first real live, honest to God alien. It thought it could make a meal of him as they stood staring at one another aboard the alien base. It was wrong.

"You haven't seen an older guy, a little shorter than I am, dressed the same way, come this way have ya, buddy?"

The green lips of the creature peeled back as it snarled and slammed its hand into his chest. The creature appeared to be confused by him, and yet, at the same time, a slow recognition was forming on its craggy features like he had seen this type of being before.

John looked down upon the hand puncturing his very carefully crafted skin. "What the hell kind of way is that to greet new guests?" John's hand went to the Wraith's arm and snapped it like a twig. Next, he grabbed the cloth on the thing's chest and shoved it through the wall.

He kept on walking until he found his commanding officer in a large hall with the remains of Teyla's kinsman. Col. Marshall Sumner, USMC, was one hundred percent pure human, except for some minor communication wiring. As John slid into the room, the robust man had a hand on his chest, which resulted in the conditions of shriveling up and screaming.

John shot his superior without blinking. Then he proceeded to kill every last one of the murdering bastards. Apparently annihilating the entire room was not a good idea, because it set off some sort of alarm and the whole kennel woke up really mad and hungry. Whoops.

The only nice thing about their first day on Atlantis was that they met the Athosians. The bad thing about their second day on Atlantis: the Athosians were left homeless. At the reception, he stood at a railing pondering this, while laughter and talking slid into background noise. Bingo, Atlantis informed him of the mainland. Problem solved.

Rodney hated the fact he could just call up information from the database with just a whimsical passing thought. The poor scientist's face would turn purple and he would forget to breathe. Priceless.

From that first day on, they went haphazardly through the first year, enemy here, ally there-- all the while hiding what and who he really was. They sailed along until the Wraith decided it was time to find out from where this new menace and cornucopia hailed. They wanted to visit this plentiful place and stay for dinner, possibly dessert. One thing led to another and John was volunteered by Col. Everett to fly a ship into one of the giant Hives and detonate it.

"I am also a flesh and blood soldier like my good friend, Col. Sumner, Major. You are an expendable asset in my view." The man condescended with the best of them.

Elizabeth stood next to John, making angry little snorts. "You're asking him to make a suicide run, only volunteers should be allowed. Just give us more time. McKay and Zelenka could get the remote control working."

Without ever breaking his at attention pose, John accepted the mission before anything else was said. "We're out of time. It's been an honor to serve under your command, Dr. Weir."

"No, John, you can't."

"I have to. I'm under his command and, no matter what I think of it, I must follow his orders. He doesn't think of me as human, but that's besides the point. You know I have to."

"You have those orders," Everett said with cold lack of sympathy. "Dismissed."

"_Colonel_…" Elizabeth stepped closer to the man and stood nose to nose with him. "You have just set a very dangerous and slippery precedent."

"One last thing, Colonel." John stood framed by the doorway, interrupting the stand off. "One bomb is not going to take care of both Hives. Someone else will have to go."

"I know, I'll ask for volunteers. Dismissed."

There it was in all of its ugly and truthful glory. He was considered a thing by those at the SGC. An automaton. A coffee pot. He climbed the stairs to the Jumper bay. He was an expensive and expendable asset. There was a chance he could survive. His body could sustain his brain for almost 30 or 40 minutes without extra air. And maybe his constructed body could withstand the vacuum of space--hopefully-- for longer.

But the human race had not come as far as he had hoped. Some only saw the differences and not the sameness. Life was life. And he, John Sheppard, might have had a hard shell encasing his still human brain, but he retained his own personality and consciousness because of that brain. Those that had fought side-by-side with him on Atlantis were acutely aware of his humanness. And that meant something.

With self-awareness firmly intact, he opened up the back of the Jumper and began the start up routine. Dr. Zelenka brought the affectionately named, Big Bad Ass Bomb No. 1, a few minutes later and set it up in the back.

"I'm sorry," he softly said. "No one should…"

"Doc, thanks, but I need to close it up. Atlantis can't take much more."

"Rodney is in next Jumper…"

The servos, pins, and small mechanisms extended and contracted in his face crafting a smile. "Tell Rodney…tell Rodney, so long."

Pushing up his glasses, Zelenka dipped his head once and exited, never looking back. The marines, pushing the bomb and that had been with him in Atlantis this entire time, saluted him as the door shut.

Once the door hissed its closure, John didn't look back. He knew where he stood and who he was. He knew his purpose in this life. John Sheppard had been given a second chance. He thanked his Dad because he got to go out doing what he loved, flying. And his final act just so happened to be accompanied by a very large bang.

But most importantly, he was protecting those that did know he was human and did care about _him_. All he had ever wanted, whether he was flesh and blood or composite and titanium, was to prove himself when it counted.

Not too shabby.

The End

_A/N: Does John make it…the Daedalus must come and save the day...right? If he does, he should make an interesting playmate for the Replicators and Kolya will have to find another way to torture him. Or just use Rodney._

_Thanks for reading!_


End file.
